A murderer who ruthlessly gunned down two innocent female bank workers has now demanded to be let out of prison – just days after President Biden saved him from death row.
Brandon Council, 38, who was sentenced to death for the cold-blooded murders of bank employees Donna Major and Katie Skeen, filed the bold request for ‘compassionate release’ on Friday.
Council murdered the two women during a horrific bank raid in Conway, South Carolina, in 2017.
After a three-week trial, he was convicted in September 2019, with judges handing down the death sentence the following month.
But in a controversial move, Biden commuted his sentence to life last Monday, in one of his final presidential decisions before his tenure ends next month.
Now Council has made the entitled demand to walk free.
The killer’s legal motion, filed in US District Court in Florence, claims that he’s been subjected to ‘severe, unnecessary, and unjustifiable psychological harm’ in solitary confinement since November 2019.
Brandon Council, 38, who was sentenced to death for the cold-blooded murders of bank employees Donna Major and Katie Skeen, filed the bold request for ‘compassionate release’ on Friday
Katie Skeen, 36, (left) and Donna Major, 59, were killed during a 2017 armed bank robbery in Conway, South Carolina
The motions claimed the harm ‘can only be accurately construed and assimilated as an act of torture.’
According to medical experts writing in the Journal of Ethics, compassionate release is meant for seriously ill or disabled inmates.
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The motion continued: ‘The petitioner’s subjection to torture is the subsequent result of the petitioner’s sentence to death, however, the additional punishment of solitary confinement which is the cause of the psychological harm is in no manner statutorily authorized, mandated, or required by the petitioner’s sentence to death.’
‘Within the jurisdiction of the United States it is both illegal and unconstitutional to inflict or subject any person to torture as a punitive consequence for a crime a party has been duly convicted of.’
This comes after the family of Skeen, who was brutally gunned down alongside her co-worker Major during an armed bank robbery slammed Biden as a ‘low life,’ for his decision to commute the killer’s death penalty to a life sentence.
Skeen, 38, was an employee at CresCom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, when she and Major, 59, became the victims of armed robber Council during a robbery in 2017.
After a three-week trial, he was convicted in September 2019, with judges handing down the death sentence the following month. But in a controversial move, Biden commuted his sentence to life on Monday. Now Council has made the entitled demand to walk free
Speaking to DailyMail.com Skeen’s mother, Betty Davis, 78, said, ‘He’s a low life. Both Biden and Council, they’re both low lifes.’
According to Davis, she and the rest of the family including Skeen’s father, John, 78, her husband of 16 years Tracy, 52, and two sons Noah, 22 and River, 17, were informed of the President’s decision in a conference call with victim advocates on last Sunday.
Council, they were told, was one of 37 killers, rapists and career criminals to have their death sentences commuted to life without parole by the outgoing president.
Three others were not spared.
Davis said, ‘I just felt heart-sick when they told us. It was like my world had just fallen apart all over again.’
Recalling the day her daughter was murdered Davis said, ‘My husband received a phone call from the Sheriff, and he just went flying out the door. Me and River jumped in my car and followed him to the Sheriff’s department and that’s when they told us. That’s when the hell began.’
Turning her attention to her daughter’s killer she said, ‘He deserved the sentence he got. My daughter had no choice over her fate, she didn’t get to choose what he did to her.’
Skeen and Major’s murders were captured on the bank’s security footage. They were played during Council’s three-week trial in 2019, meaning their families had to witness the horror of the women’s terrifying last moments
Skeen’s mother said, ‘Everyone should see the video of what he did to them. Everyone should see his face as he killed them, there was no emotion. There is no place for sympathy for that man.
Katie Skeen, 36, was one of two workers at CresCom bank who was killed by armed robber Brandon Council, 38 – his death sentence is being commuted by President Joe Biden along with 36 others
President Biden made his announcement on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row – meaning they’ll now serve life sentences without the possibility of parole
‘Him getting the death sentence meant everything to us. It meant justice for Katie and Donna.’
Davis said that the family – including Skeen’s husband with whom they remain extremely close – has been buoyed by the messages of support they have received in the wake of Biden’s announcement Monday.
The family has kept in touch with the investigators who arrested Council and the attorneys who prosecuted him and, Davis said, they are just as ‘heart-sick’ at the news as Skeen’s own loved ones.
She said, ‘The last couple of days have been depressing but the messages from friends moves you and shows you that you’re not alone.’
She added that all the family would be together over the holidays and that Skeen who was a devout Born-Again Christian would be with them in spirit.
The small city of Conway in South Carolina was rocked by the women’s senseless killings. With a population of just over 17,000 at the time, the violence hit the coastal town in Horry County hard.